I've never read a PDF on my Kindle Paperwhite but I think it's just like any other ebook. If I'm correct, you just have to use Calibre to transfer it to your Kindle. Or you can just drag and drop the PDF file to the 'documents' folder found in the root of the Kindle when connected to the laptop.

The Paperwhite can read PDF files natively, this means that you won't have to convert the file. You won't be able to change the font size, line spacing, etc. if you want these features, you're going to have to convert the PDF file to AZW3.

You can send the pdf file to your kindle email with "convert" in the subject of the email and it will convert it for you. It has a tendency to jack some of the graphics if you are converting a textbook for example. I had several pdfs I had to read for a class and did't want to print and carry a thousand pages. The convert bit worked well on my Fire, no reason it shouldn't work on the PW.

It's perhaps worth adding the caveat that PDFs will rarely convert cleanly to another format. A PDF document doesn't actually contain text (unless there's a searchable text layer in it, but that's a different thing entirely); it simply contains drawing instructions of the form "draw this shape at these coordinates". If you do need to convert a PDF to a "proper" eBook format, an OCR program is often the best way to do so.

Harry T is right.... PDFs on Ebook readers....do not compute.... better to use Calibre.... if not.. Print out book and carefully cut said pages to fit onto kindle screen... use post it notes to hold paper in front of screen... remove page after each reading of page...detach..reapply new page....or better yet...use calibre convert the pdf to .mobi via Calibre (.mobi is the standard Amazon format)....